


Soliloquy

by earlgreymanatee



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alien Character(s), Drug Use, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:23:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8710660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreymanatee/pseuds/earlgreymanatee
Summary: Ezri wants to have a conversation with Jadzia. She'll settle for a hallucination.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [DS9 Reverse Bang](http://ds9reversebang.tumblr.com/). Based on [this art](http://misterbananabeak.tumblr.com/post/151396301859/sorry-ezri-those-are-some-awfully-big-shoes-to) by misterbananabeak

Of all the lifetimes and personalities now contained within Ezri, Jadzia felt the most dominant, the most insistent. Perhaps it was because she had not been ready to go. Of course, neither had Torias or Joran, or Verad for that matter, but the way those memories sat inside her felt different. They had not wanted to go, but they inhabited a place and time far from Deep Space Nine, in Torias and Joran’s case, and so briefly and unwantedly in Verad’s. 

Almost every centimeter of the station had been touched some way by Jadzia. Just walking around she would think about how Jadzia had loved that outfit of Molly’s or remember a date she had once had at that table in Quark’s. She could never get away from Jadzia on this station; it was positively covered in her memories, and worse, her unfinished business.

Of all her memories and thoughts, Jadzia’s plans were the worst. It ranged from relatively small things (she had been meaning to talk to O’Brien about that viewscreen that seemed to lag by a second or so, but she never got a chance) to the huge things (Ezri had gone to her quarters and cried for an afternoon the first time she ran into somebody who was pregnant on the station, Jadzia’s biggest unfinished business was her plan to start having children soon.)

Jadzia, or her memories or personality, or whatever, did not take these reminders quietly. She was pushy. There were times when Ezri would disassociate and simply let Jadzia drive. She could let herself, her Ezri self, become nothing, and let her memories of Jadzia’s personality take over, make her decisions for her. She could go whole days like this. They always ended poorly. Ezri couldn’t disappear for ever. Inevitably, she would eat something that made her sick that Jadzia had loved, or try to do Klingon martial in the holosuite and overexert her body that was inexperienced with it, or she would drink more than she was used to or sleep with somebody impulsively. She couldn’t let Jadzia make decisions for her forever.

At the same time, when she fought to mentally put herself first, to resist the Jadzia part of her brain from doing something Ezri knew she would not enjoy, she could feel the Jadzia part of her getting mad. She wasn’t done! This station was her home! No matter what she did, Ezri was sick and frustrated and emotional all the time. It just was not working out. But there is no going back on being joined. 

She was talking to a therapist back on Trill who specialized in issues of joining weekly, but even she seemed at a loss. Because Ezri’s joining had been unprecedentedly sudden and unprepared for, it seemed Ezri was reacting, well, unprecedentedly poorly to her joining. Ezri had suggested that she have her zhian’tara early. She felt that if she could just sit down and talk with Jadzia for a bit, if she could pull apart the Jadzia part of her from the Ezri part of her for a couple hours, she might be able to make some sense of her feelings. Her therapist had refused. Having a zhian’tara so early into a joining was unheard of, and besides, she wasn’t stable enough. Ezri knew that even if she could convince her therapist, there would be no convincing the symbiosis commission.

Still, she could not shake the idea that what she needed was just to sit down and talk to Jadzia for a while. She had turned to Julian, who had studied up on Trill biology and psychology on her behalf, but he could not offer much. Starfleet was reluctant to approve any treatment that would upset the symbiosis commission.

However, one late night, when she was back in the infirmary for having yet another panic attack, Julian pulled her aside before she left.

“I may have...reverse engineered some of the chemicals used in the zhian’tara,” he told her, slightly guiltily. He handed her a PADD. “I can obtain the first one as your doctor, but the second one, there is no chance. But if you could somehow…obtain it yourself, I believe taken in these doses, they would induce roughly the effect you are looking for.”

She took the PADD directly to Quark, inquiring urgently if he could get the drug for her. After he asked her to please be quiet, this is a legitimate business, I’m just a bartender, what would I know about illegal drugs, he took the PADD from her with no promises. A couple weeks later, just as Ezria had given up on the possibility, Quark called her to the bar, where he slipped her a small vial and let her know that this wasn’t a gift and that she owed him a favor.

She ran back to her quarters and began to prepare for her trip.

***

Ezri had filled her room with objects, or replicated versions of objects, that had belonged or had strong emotional importance to Jadzia. The couch had a fur blanket thrown over it. Her favorite hair clip rested on the table. Some of her clothes hung in the closet. Ezri walked around the room running her hands over them.

“Don’t try to force or fight any emotions,” she thought to herself, “just let them happen and pass through you.”

After several minutes of touching and mediating on every object in the room, she sat down on the couch, ready for the experience proper to begin. Julian had prepared the two drugs for her in drinkable form. As he had explained, the first drug was going to sedate the symbiont and numb her conscious connection to it. She would still have mental access to the symbiont subconsciously. The idea was that if she would not feel like she was joined, but her subconscious mind would be able to draw on the symbiont’s memories when she started hallucinating, which would be the purpose of the second drug. 

She downed the small glass of cold tea spiked with the sedative and the effects were shockingly instant. She felt as if a glass of ice water had been dumped inside her. She had not expected to feel a physical numbness in her gut, running up inside her to the back of her neck. She was distracted by prodding the cold lump in her gut that she knew was the sedated symbiont, thinking about this mass inside her, for several minutes before remembering she was supposed to be centering herself and testing the sedative’s mental effects. 

She got up and picked up a journal with several questions she had written to herself. “What was Jadzia’s sister like?” she read aloud to herself. She stopped, realizing instantly that she had no idea what Jadzia’s sister was like. She knew that she, Ezri, had the Dax symbiont inside of her and that the previous host had been Jadzia Dax and that she should know that, but she simply did not. It was working.

She read another question to be sure. “What name name was Jadzia hoping to give her first child?”

Not only did she not know, but while she normally got emotional about not being able to have had babies with Worf, she felt very little this time.

Part of her just wanted to walk out of her room and enjoy her couple hours as Ezri Tigan. Nothing was making her stay and take the hallucinogen. Symbiont sedatives like this were highly controlled substances for this exact reason: unstable joined Trill like her who might start taking them constantly, permanently damaging the symbiont. Instead, they were used for medical procedures and occasionally therapy. The second reason was how Julian had obtained the information to replicate the sedative from Trill scientists. They seemed uneasy giving her access to it, but even they had to admit, if any joined Trill ever had some complex trauma to work through, it was her.

The computer gave a gentle beep, reminding her that she needed to take the hallucinogen now if she wanted to get the timing of the two drugs right. She downed the small cup of clear fluid containing the hallucinogen. It tasted very sweet, almost a syrup. She had been told that this one would take a little longer to kick. This drug was not strictly legal. It wasn’t strictly illegal either. It depended who you asked. 

She reclined on the couch flat on her back and tried to meditate on the facts she knew about Jadzia. She still had all her memories since joining, so she actually knew quite a lot about Jadzia. After all, everybody on the station could barely stop talking about her. This was the crucial part. She wanted to meditate on Jadzia intensely enough that she would hallucinate an accurate, symbiont-informed Jadzia. With no body to transfer a past host to, like during a zhian’tara, Ezri was instead going to be relying on a hallucination.

Ezri looked around the room, wondering if she was hallucinating yet. There was no Jadzia, but the room was starting to go hazy. Things seemed to blur out of her vision unless she looked right at them and focused. Everything in the room seemed to have a soft glowing aura swimming around it. She felt slightly as if she was floating in no place at all. Again, it would have been so easy to get lost in this gentle haze, alone with her own thoughts (just hers). But she knew why she was here.

She closed her eyes and meditated on thoughts of Jadzia as intently as she could.

“Jadzia, who had my symbiont before me. Jadzia, who was married to a Klingon man. Jadzia, who fought and loved fiercely. Jadzia, who loved to play Tongo,” she thought, letting her mind settle on all the things she knew about Jadzia.

After several minutes she opened her eyes. The room had become even more hazy and distant. Even the couch she was sitting on was barely there, even when she was looking directly at it. She ran her hands over the fabric to reassure herself.

As the room began to shimmer and shake and feel a million miles away, so did Ezri’s body. Her body felt like a distant puppet, in her control, but hardly her. She tried to center herself by thinking about Jadzia.

Suddenly, Jadzia was there. Or rather, she had always been there. She was standing there looking gently expectant, as if she had been waiting to greet Ezri. She had her hands folded behind her back and looking friendly and casual. She was wearing her uniform.

“Hello, Ezri,” she said calmly, “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” 

“Oh! Thank you!” Ezri spluttered, remembering how to form words.

“I know you are going through all this trouble because you want to speak to me. But can I first just say: I am so happy I get to meet you. I’m sorry it has to be under these circumstances.” 

“Well thanks. I wish I could have met you, too. You know, when you were alive. I hear so much about you. All the time.”

Jadzia nodded. “People miss me.”

“Boy do they ever,” Ezri laughed a little bitterly, “they try to treat me normal, but, yanno, I can tell they miss you. And they don’t really, really understand the ways that I’m both you and not you.”

Jadzia laughed. “Goodness, do non-Trill ever really do?”

Ezri giggled. “And I don't think they realize that um, that I’m mourning too?”

“How can they understand what it’s like; to have to mourn somebody who you never knew life but also know more intimately than they will ever. To mourn yourself, your own death.” She paused. “Nobody really understands what death and grief is like for joined Trill, except other joined Trill, and even then it is different for everybody,” Jadzia said, “In fact, there it’s so fraught there is a whole school of counseling devoted to it.”

“I know, I studied it, even did some of it in my residency, when I was studying to be a counselor,” Ezri said, giggling self-consciously “But even I didn’t really get it” She felt suddenly more morose and nostalgic, thinking about her life before joining.

Jadzia gave her a sympathetic look. “You have it unusually rough. Even without the unexpected joining, it’s always harder with sudden, unexpected deaths. Harder still with traumatic ones. As you know, the freshest memory you have as soon as you are joined is of your own death. It was utterly surreal, even for me, and Curzon had the most serene and calm death possible.” Jadzia looked a little pained, thinking about her own recent, violent death. 

“Yes!” Ezri exclaimed, “It was so hard to explain to the non-Trill doctors why I started sobbing as soon as I woke up after being joined. Well, it was hard to explain because shortly after that I started vomiting uncontrollably.”

Jadzia nodded knowingly. It was nice to talk to somebody who understood. In fact, Jadzia understood probably more than anybody else ever would or could. But understanding conversation was not Ezri’s main reason for doing this.

“Um Jadzia, I hope you understand this, and I mean, meeting you is such an honor, but well, the reason I wanted to talk to you is, um, haha this is hard.” She took a deep breath. “Sometimes, well a lot of the time, I feel like you uh, you, or the part of me now that is you, wants to still be Jadzia. And well, it’s making things really hard for me! Because I’m not Jadzia Dax, I’m Ezri Dax. And it’s hard enough having everyone around me thinking about you and missing you every time I’m around them. And I really wish my own brain was on my side. So, do you think maybe you could back off a little bit? In my brain? I feel like sometimes you aren’t really giving me a chance.”

Ezri wasn’t sure exactly what response she was expecting when you confront a hallucination representing a lifetime of memories that lives in your own brain.

She thought perhaps Jadzia would be sad, after all it’s always hard to take criticism like this, and Ezri knew that’s how she would feel. But instead Jadzia looked angry.

“Ezri,” she said, her voice shaking. She looked as if she was about to yell at Ezri. Her rage seemed to build and fall before she got a chance. She looked away from Ezri.

“I’m sorry Ezri. I just...I wasn’t ready to go. You know that. And I’ve always been a very pushy person. And no offense, but you are so meek you might disappear sometimes. Of course this would happen. I need to try to let you be you. I need to…” She trailed off as she descended into heaving sobs.

Jadzia was not a somber person, or one to lose control often. Ezri knew, so it was odd to see her break down like this. Even at her most impulsive, there had always been a degree of control about Jadzia. She seemed to be utterly overtaken with despair. She was clearly just deeply, spiritually depressed about the fact that her self, as Jadzia, had ended. She had decided to stop fighting, and all that was left was frustration and sadness. Her aura of light was spinning and dancing uncontrollably, pulling at her edges as if Jadzia might explode into light at any moment.

Ezri didn’t feel she had anything to say. At the same time she felt the corners of her vision pulling into reality. She had no idea how long it had been, but the change in her perception must have meant the drugs were beginning to wear off. Should she say goodbye to Jadzia? They would be together again very soon.

“Would you like a hug?” she offered meekly.

Jadzia glanced up, face streaked with tears, and nodded. 

Ezri pulled her arms up to embrace her, noting that she felt like she was more in her own body again. It no longer seemed a distant, spasming thing. It had felt like they had hardly had enough time together to talk, but time was hard to gauge in her current state. Jadzia leaned into Ezri’s arms, and as she did she seemed to pass into and through Ezri. Her light exploded and Ezri felt a sudden heat deep in her belly. At the same time Jadzia seemed to be walking away from her in every direction, her light fading.

Ezri had half a second to think that she was sad to see Jadzia go, before memories began to flood hotly into her mind out of her stomach. She almost blacked out from the sudden wave, which was not unlike that of being joined, but she held on. As she felt Jadzia’s presence around her fade, Jadzia’s memories entered her like the phaser beam that had entered her body. Where before Jadzia had felt overwhelming and insistent, she now felt resigned and quiet. Ezri’s calm broke and she began to cry.


End file.
